1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and display system for displaying an image with high resolution, and more particularly to a method and display system for displaying an image through an extended Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) to PCI bridge.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 1 illustrates a generic architecture for a conventional system 100 including a monitor display 101 connected, via a cable 102, to a personal computer (PC) box 110 including a central processing unit (CPU) and host Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bridge 103 and graphics adaptor 104.
In such systems, there is an increasing trend to replace analog cathode ray tube (CRT) desktop monitors 101 with flat panel display monitors. Various factors contribute to this trend including desktop space saving, power saving, higher resolution and crisper images.
As flat panel display technology pushes towards higher resolutions and actually surpasses the capabilities of current CRT monitors, the question of how to connect the computer to the display becomes an issue.
That is, a problem with the architecture shown in FIG. 1 is that the cable 102 from the graphics adaptor 104 in the PC box 110 to the monitor 101 carries faster information (i.e., pixel by pixel description of the image at 60+Hz refresh rate) which is too fast for the graphics adaptor 104/monitor 101 to handle efficiently. Thus, the bandwidth requirements increase drastically when increasing the resolution or refresh rate of the monitor 101.
Moreover, for a digitally-driven flat panel monitor, the bandwidth requirement is scaled again by the number of bits per pixel (i.e., color resolution).
FIG. 2 summarizes the bandwidth requirements for various common display resolutions, bits per pixel and refresh rates.
From the above, it is clear that connection between the PC and the monitor becomes a bottleneck in the system, especially when digital signals (and thus many more bits/information than analog signals) are sent from the graphics adaptor 104 to the monitor 101. Further, the higher resolution that is provided means that more data which must be displayed.
That is, conventionally, the output of the graphics adaptor has rasterization information (e.g., a matrix of lines and within each of the lines pixel-by-pixel are displayed). As mentioned above, with digital signals becoming more prevalent, more data (e.g., in the form of higher refresh rates, higher pixel counts, a higher number of colors, etc.) will be provided to the graphics adaptor, thereby leading to higher bandwidth requirements and hence the bottleneck. Currently, the monitor is “dumb” and only knows what pixels to place at which point Thus, the higher resolution displays will cause a severe bottleneck between the graphics adaptor and the monitor.
Additionally, there are electromagnetic induction (EMI) and power dissipation problems. That is, because this system configuration forces a serial connection, the frequency of transmission is high and this aggravates power and EMI. In addition, the current digital serial display connections are dedicated and “one-way.” If there are to be other output devices in the display (speakers, etc.), or input devices (keyboard, mouse, camera, etc.), then other connection mechanisms must be added. These additional connections are not possible with the current dedicated display connections.
Thus, hitherto the present invention, no satisfactory solution has been proposed.